DPReview.com is closing April 10th - Find out more

The king of portrait lenses

Started Jan 25, 2018 | User reviews thread
highlights Regular Member • Posts: 198
Re: The king of portrait lenses
1

Scott Larson wrote:

A couple of my favorite portrait photographers shoot everything at f8-f16 (yes, with 35mm cameras). They make sure everything in the background relates to the person in the photo (they often shoot in their work environments) and they use lights instead of DOF to separate them from the background.

But it's way easier and quicker to just blur everything in the background.

This is absolutely the best way to do portraiture. The technique itself is hundreds of years old in the sense that this is how the great painters used light and composition for their work.

My view is that you need at least two feet of sharper focus field for good portraiture with the lit background four feet at least behind that (in a controlled environment -be that a studio or outdoor. (we have planted areas that we have deliberately cultivated to allow this).

For a fine formal portraiture sitting, I find that the MF lenses are better than anything I have used in the ff SLR world - especially if it is to be a big print or for some matter of lasting record.

 highlights's gear list:highlights's gear list
Canon EOS 5DS R Nikon D750 Canon EOS 7D Mark II Nikon D5 Canon EOS-1D X Mark II +26 more
Keyboard shortcuts:
FForum PPrevious NNext WNext unread UUpvote SSubscribe RReply QQuote BBookmark MMy threads
Color scheme? Blue / Yellow